April 17, 2013

Reports are coming in this morning that Google Drive and Gmail have been hit with service disruptions, upsetting many customers and leading to the inevitably predictable Twitter outbursts.

According to Google´s App Status Dashboard, Gmail, Google Drive, Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and Groups are all experiencing a “service disruption” as of 11:30 EST. Google´s Admin control pale and API is currently listed as a “service outage.”

“We are currently investigating issues with Gmail, Drive and Docs as well as the Google Apps Control Panel,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement to The Next Web.

“We are providing more information and frequent updates through our Google Apps Status Dashboard. We will post the root cause of the issue there when our teams have completed their investigation. In the meantime, for everyone who is affected, we apologize — we know you count on Google to work for you and we´re working hard to restore normal operation for you.”

The admin control panel and API was the first to go at 8:20 EST this morning. It moved from a service disruption to a service outage less than an hour later. Gmail was the next to go at 8:58 EST. A few moments later, Google described Gmail´s outage as affecting only 0.007 percent of the Gmail user base. Forty minutes later, Google claimed service had been restored for some users, saying they expected to fully restore service in the “near future.”

Google Drive was the next to go shortly after 9 am EST. Just as they had done with Gmail, Google claimed service had been restored for some users nearly 15 minutes after they acknowledged the service disruption.

Other Google services - including documents, presentations, and spreadsheets - soon followed in the outages. Google claims they´ve restored service for some users in each of these instances.

As these things often go, there are now conflicting reports about if Google´s services are fully operational. For instance, even Google´s Dashboard claims that these services are experiencing an outage. Yet when looking at these services individually, Google claims they´ve each been restored to full capacity.

Other sites such as IsItDownRightNow.com show that Google Drive is up and fully operational. The site DownRightNow.com claims, however, that Gmail may still be experiencing some issues at the time of this writing.

As they often do, affected users took to Twitter to share their experiences and frustrations.